


The Beginning Stuff

by imgoingtocrash



Series: Cloak 'verse [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Kanan deals with his son growing up, Light Angst, Sabine asks Ezra about the past and he's unprepared
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 06:00:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13452015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imgoingtocrash/pseuds/imgoingtocrash
Summary: "“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Sabine starts, stopping to take a bite of her own food. “What’s the deal with you, Kanan, and Hera, anyway?”Ezra goes still, his eyes going from her face to his bowl with an odd sort of intensity.It’s not as if she thought the question would be a particularly easy one. If Ezra asked her out of the blue to start explaining her family, she’d likely have to restrain herself from screaming at him. It can be a sensitive topic, even for someone who seemingly has it so good with such supportive people as Kanan and Hera."Sabine's only been with the crew for a few months and asks Ezra some questions about their past that he's not quite ready to answer. Kanan does a little bit of emotional damage control.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I (finally) got around to this story! I’ve wanted to write something with more of the crew in it for this verse, but this fic was very start and stop because I couldn’t figure out how to get it where I wanted it. As always, I adore writing the banter scenes, but get my bits of angst/plot in there because I can’t seem to help myself.
> 
> In the AU Timeline: Kanan is 27, Ezra is 13. Zeb knows about Kanan’s Jedi past as a side effect of the mission that recruited him, but Sabine—who’s relatively new to the crew—doesn’t yet. Hence, Ezra’s dodging around a lot of Jedi-relevant stuff in his past while also trying to be honest with Sabine because he wants to get to know her better.

Sabine still finds the noises of the _Ghost_ crew going about their morning routines slightly jarring, even after being on the ship for the last three months. She’d gotten used to the sounds of the Academy’s morning wake-up drills: rushing through getting dressed, parting her un-dyed dark hair with the same military precision, and showing up to the mess hall for the same old tasteless provisions. Before that it was her family’s quiet breakfasts, always promptly early and unable to be missed unless injured or sick.

The _Ghost_ is a mishmash of noises and behavior far from both of those environments, but she can’t say she doesn’t love every second of it.

No one wakes her unless there’s a mission briefing she needs to be present for. Foods of both instant nutrition and actual flavor are available to her at any time, even sugar-filled pastries that she only shares a liking for with Ezra. She fills her days with training, art, and bonding with every member of the crew more and more. There’s a lot to like about the _Ghost_ and its crew, even if it’s a change.  

That’s why it’s of no surprise that when she finally gets dressed and begins to stroll towards the _Ghost_ ’s kitchen, she starts her morning with the sounds of Ezra and Kanan's familiar squabbling. 

“We’re heading out,” Kanan says, voice even, but without seeing him yet she tell he’s likely got his arms crossed.

Then follows the tinkling sounds of cereal being poured into one of the dishes from the cupboards. “Okay,” Ezra says, bored and barely acknowledging Kanan’s comment.

“You know the rules, right?”

Ezra scoffs. “No, I’ve forgotten since the last three-hundred times you’ve explained them to me in the last four years.”

“Ezra,” Kanan warns. When Sabine finally reaches the doorway, she does in fact find Kanan standing with his arms crossed and a flat look on his face.

“Kanan,” Ezra retorts in a similar tone, crossing his arms and looking up from his current position at the counter where he’s seemingly fixing his breakfast. They stare at each other in silence for a moment before Ezra squirms a little, caving. “I’m gonna be fine. _Sabine and I_ are going to be fine. You’ve left me alone on the ship plenty of times. I know how to take care of myself. I’m almost fourteen.”

“Oh, well if you’re almost fourteen, then.” Kanan rolls his eyes and grumbles, unimpressed. “And you weren’t alone,” Kanan mumbles the next part, aware of how pitiful an argument it sounds. “You were with Chopper.” 

“Yes, Chop was _so_ helpful that time those sleemo tried to steal the _Ghost_ while you guys were gone. And because I didn’t have a blaster, I had to hide in the vents for an hour until you and Hera showed up!”

“You were ten years old! I stand by not entrusting a ten year old with a blaster. Besides, he thought to comm us immediately when something went wrong.” Kanan raises an eyebrow, prompting. “Which is why…?”

Ezra sighs heavily, as if terribly burdened, before reciting. “Comms are to be worn at all times and, when hailed, responded to immediately.”

“Very good. We’ll be gone for a maximum of two days. Stay out of trouble and don’t break anything on the ship that you can’t fix before Hera finds out.”

“ _Okay_ , Dad, just go already. Force, we’ll be fine, I promise.” 

“Uh-huh.” Kanan pulls Ezra into a short one-armed embrace before ruffling Ezra’s hair and getting pushed away for his trouble.

Sabine strolls into the room with a short wave in their direction, walking by to get into the cabinets for a bowl and spoon of her own. “If Ezra _does_ do anything, I’ll be sure to drag him out of it by the seat of his pants, as usual,” she quips, smiling when Ezra looks entirely unamused.  

“ _Please_ take her with you,” Ezra grumbles before shoving the box of cereal into her palm with a little more force than normal.

“Poor kid just can’t take a joke.” Kanan smiles at her, shaking his head back and forth dramatically. “No idea where I went wrong.”

Ezra just groans at Kanan, sloshing some blue milk onto the flakes of his cereal and stomping over to the booth of the dejarak table.

“Try not to torture him _too_ much while we’re gone, Sabine,” Kanan jokes, placing a firm squeeze of his hand on her shoulder before turning around and presumably heading towards the _Phantom_ where Hera and Zeb are waiting.

“He'll be in good hands,” she affirms, returning a playful smile at Kanan’s back.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Ezra grumbles when she takes the seat across from him in the booth with her own breakfast. “You’re not even that much older than me.” 

“You keep telling yourself that, kid.” Sabine adds on the moniker for an extra tease, laughing when Ezra throws a balled up napkin at her with striking accuracy. 

“I’ve been on this ship longer than you have." Ezra points his spoon at her for emphasis, the milk on it dripping down onto the table. “If anything, I should be babysitting _you_. You might blow the ship up with one of your explosive experiments. Do you even know where the fire extinguisher is?”

“There are like, five of them on the ship. Do I really need to recite their exact locations for you?” 

Ezra just shrugs, dropping the argument in favor of trying to eat his cereal before it gets soggy.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Sabine starts, stopping to take a bite of her own food. “What’s the deal with you, Kanan, and Hera, anyway?”

Ezra goes still, his eyes going from her face to his bowl with an odd sort of intensity.

It’s not as if she thought the question would be a particularly easy one. If Ezra asked her out of the blue to start explaining her family, she’d likely have to restrain herself from screaming at him. It can be a sensitive topic, even for someone who seemingly has it so good with such supportive people as Kanan and Hera.

When she first joined the crew—cagey and angry and distrusting as she initially was and sometimes still is—she was surprised to find someone else so young among their ranks. 

Zeb wasn’t that much of an oddity. He used to be a soldier and the Empire had fiercely wronged him. It made sense that he would join freedom fighters like Kanan and Hera and vouch for their goodness to her.

She wasn’t foolish enough to think that the Empire hadn’t also destroyed the lives of children just like her across the galaxy—she was just surprised that Ezra was an active part of the fight. 

He hadn’t been on the mission in which she was recruited, but he joined them for many after that. He was sharp. Impressive for someone who seemed so young and small. At times he seemed much too somber for a thirteen year old. (Though she often felt too troubled for a fifteen year old, so she supposed she had no room to judge.) 

“What do you mean?” Ezra finally responds, swirling his spoon around in his bowl instead of looking at her. 

“You don't have to answer. You know, if you don’t want to. I was just…curious, I guess.” She shrugs, regretting how they’ve lapsed into an uncomfortable sort of quiet. “Sometimes you call Kanan ‘Dad’, but other times you don't. You say you’ve been here for a long time, but I get the sense that it hasn’t been all your life. I can tell how much Kanan and Hera care for you, _love_ you. It’s just a little odd, you being out in this fight so young. Younger than I was when I finally wised up to how bad the Empire really was.”

“It’s…” _Complicated_ , he doesn’t say, or some variant thereof. He finally looks at her, his eyes focused and almost searching. She hopes that he sees her intentions are well meaning, even if she is being a little nosy. “I’ve been on the _Ghost_ since I was about nine. Kanan and Hera ended up working together on this mining planet—Gorse—and the next thing I know, we’re being invited on to the crew of this ship. They don’t talk about what happened there much, but Hera trusted him enough to want him to stay. She extended that trust to me too. Since then, I’ve been more than willing to give it back. It’s hard to imagine being anywhere else, now.”

“But you were? Before that?”

Ezra nods. “A lot of places. Since Empire Day, it’s just been Kanan and I, really. We moved wherever there was work for Kanan to get. The _Ghost_ is as close to home as we’ve had since…well, it doesn’t matter. My real—my _biological_ parents were from Lothal, but I haven’t been there much outside of missions.”

“Are they…?”

He hesitates, unsure. “I—I never knew. We were…separated when I was young. Kanan had a few leads on them years ago, but all we know is that they disappeared from Lothal. I thought I found something else, but it, um, never really paid off.”

She wants to say _I’m sorry_. Wants to say she knows being separated from family. However, it’s not the same and she thinks it might be worse to trying to equate it that way. Instead, she changes the direction of the conversation. “So how did you meet Kanan, then?”

At this, Ezra smiles. She’d quietly always suspected Ezra at the very least considered Kanan his parent, even if they weren’t biologically related. There’s a bond there she can’t begin to describe. Eerie, sometimes, how they read each other’s moods so clearly, seemed to silently coordinate plans to perfection on missions. “He was a mentor to me, back when I was really small. I was always following him around, trying to bug him into hanging out with me instead of behaving.”

“You? Not listening to what people want you to do?” she teases.

“Haha,” he laughs flatly.

They’re quiet again for a moment, Ezra finished playing with the dregs of milk and cereal in his bowl and Sabine uninterested in the soggy mess now in her own.

“It must’ve been nice—having Kanan as a dad, I mean.” She tries not to think of her own father, of her mother and her brother. How she loved them but they didn’t stand by her when all she wanted was to protect Mandalore instead of do more harm to it. _Why didn’t they understand_ — _!_

“It was,” Ezra answers, pulling her out of her mind’s dangerous territory. “It is. He’s ridiculous and overprotective as all hells sometimes, but that’s not always a bad thing. He looked out for me when he didn’t have to. When it would have been easier not to. When everything else was awful…at least we were together.”

“Empire Day. That’s when you said everything started. Is that when you were separated from your parents?” She tries for a smile, hoping to keep the mood light despite the continued questions. “Anyone specific I can go after for you?” 

“I—“ Ezra crosses his arms, then uncrosses them. He stutters, running his hand through his already unruly hair. “I, um. I can’t—”

She feels awful, ruining the mood like that again, making him so clearly upset. “Oh, no, if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t—I was just joking, I didn’t mean to—“

“No, I _can’t_ ,” he says, shaking his head and half-jumping out of his seat at the table. “Look, Sabine, we like having you here, so I— _please_ don’t ask about that stuff, okay?”

“What—?” She doesn’t understand exactly what she asked about in more detail. The Empire? His parents? What happened on Empire Day itself apart from what everyone in the galaxy already knows? Hera would gladly go against the Empire for Kanan and Ezra, so why—?

Before she can get another word out, Ezra’s already out the door, leaving his dirty dishes across from her on the table and closing the door to his bunk before she can think to ask him to stop.

She sits there for a moment in the quiet, unsure how to answer when Chopper rolls through a few minutes later with a few inquisitive beeps as to what all the noise was about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ezra’s mention of “something else” concerning his parents is his vision of them mentioned in _Caleb Dume’s Cloak_. He never found out if it was a real lead or just a dream, and won’t until Season 2 of Rebels.
> 
> Also in that fic, Ezra expresses a very real fear about talking about what happened on Empire Day/at the temple. He and Kanan have spent a long time hiding themselves as Jedi, and even with express permission from Kanan, Ezra has a hard time telling anyone about it, even if it’s to someone like Sabine he’s starting to trust.


	2. Chapter 2

Something is wrong when Kanan takes his first steps back onto the _Ghost_ , and he can’t tell what it is.

At first he assumes danger. His instinct is to hover his palm over his blaster and take slow, even steps across the cargo hold. Hera raises an eyebrow, more cautious than Zeb, who struts loudly up the ramp grumbling about the heat of the planet they’re about to leave behind.

“M’gonna stink the poor kid out of our room no matter how many times I wash off in the damn ‘fresher,” Zeb complains, shrugging off his bow rifle and only stopping when he turns to Hera and Kanan standing completely still behind him. His ears and eyebrows simultaneously quirk in confusion. “What? You hear something I don’t?”

“No,” Kanan says, frowning. His senses within the Force are out of practice, but his initial sweep reveals nothing out of place. Ezra’s in his bunk—possibly brooding based on the muted sensation of their connection, but Kanan can’t imagine over what. Sabine is in her room as well. Chopper is already in the cargo bay, whirring and clicking as he complains about them standing around doing nothing.

“Having an off day, love?” Hera asks, a comforting hand going up and down his arm in a few quick strokes.

“Mmm,” he hums, shaking his head. “It’s just… _quiet_.” It’s hard for him to describe. 

It wasn’t as if Ezra couldn’t be well-behaved. He’d spent many years entertaining himself when he’d been too young for going on jobs and long ago when Kanan was the only one able to work to provide for them. He trusted Ezra to take care of himself within reason of a young child being able to care for themselves when less than constantly stimulated.

It just wasn’t the quiet of well-behaved teens minding their own business. It was stifling, almost, the way Ezra seemed to be determined to stay in his room even though he knew they had returned. Sabine too seemed defiant, perfectly still in her position and with no seeming plans to move as Zeb clomps farther into the ship and up to the galley.

“You consider that to be a problem? On _this_ ship?” Hera jokes, but then seems to look at his face and realize he’s really not being funny. “Is it something I should be worried about?”

“Not sure yet,” he mutters, scratching at the stubble on his chin before letting out a sigh. “I’ll go talk to Ezra.”

“Do you need me to tag along?”

Kanan considers it for a moment—happy to have help in trying to solve the unknown problems of their young charges—but declines. “I hope not. Go ahead and get us on our way if you’d like, Captain. I’ll shoulder the role of Team Parent on my own for now.”

“At least you have the practice for it, dear.” Hera squeezes his hand before going ahead to the cockpit. He chuckles despite his lingering worry, then composes himself in preparation for whatever Ezra might be upset about.

Kanan strides to Ezra’s door, noting the smell of paint in the air not far away, reminding him that he’ll likely also have to talk to Sabine when he’s though with Ezra.

He gives a few firm raps on Ezra’s door before tapping the control to open it. He finds Ezra flopped on his stomach on his treasured top bunk, eyes glued to the datapad in front of him. He barely even moves his eyes to spare Kanan a glance, which means he’s likely aware that Kanan’s noticed there’s something going on and is trying to be nonchalant and pretend there’s not a problem.

“We’re back,” Kanan starts, moving into the room more fully. The lights are dimmed—apparently Ezra’s watching some kind of entertainment holo—and Kanan almost trips himself on a haphazard pile of clothing in the floor. The room has gotten much messier since Zeb started bunking with Ezra. Between the recognizable scent of Lasat and the rebellious laziness of a growing teenager, it’s hard to remember that at one time the room was filled with only the few treasured possessions Ezra owned as decoration.

“Zeb told me before he went to the refresher.” He barely hears Ezra say this, as Ezra then flips himself so that his back is facing the doorway and clearly telling Kanan that he’s not interested in conversation.

Kanan sighs. “Ezra…”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ezra replies, finally pausing the holo and burrowing himself further against the wall of his bunk.

“And that’s exactly why I think we _should_ talk about it.” Kanan climbs the ladder of the bunks, sitting himself near Ezra’s pillow and running his hand over Ezra’s back in a comforting gesture. “What happened with you and Sabine? I thought you guys were getting along. You wanted her to be a Spectre as much as everyone else.”

“I did!” Ezra huffs, flipping himself around to look up at Kanan and petulantly frowning before diverting his gaze to a drool stain on his pillowcase. “I do.”

“It’s her fault!” Ezra suddenly sits up, barely stopping himself from bashing his head into the top of the bunk. “Everything was fine until she started asking questions!”

It clicks then in Kanan’s mind. Ezra’s usually the most talkative out of any of them. Which means he’s discomforted by the one thing he’s always been scared to discuss, even with Kanan’s permission. “About?”

“About you, about Hera, about my parents, all of it! I tried to get her to stop, but she kept asking about what happened and who she could go after and I just—“ Ezra stops his rushed words to breathe for a moment, curling in on himself again. “I don’t want her to have to leave, so I told her to stop.”

“Ezra, why would Sabine have to leave? We already told her that she’s on the crew.”

“What if she doesn’t stop asking, Kanan? What if she digs into us and finds out what we were? Then everyone will be in danger and _we’ll_ have to leave. It’s gonna be us or her.” Ezra curls into Kanan’s side, his head resting slightly on Kanan’s tilted thigh. He whispers “I don’t wanna lose another home, Dad.”

Kanan’s heart feels like it’s physically aching. It’s hard not to put the blame for Ezra’s reaction on himself. Maybe he should. All those years telling Ezra to close himself away from the Force and walk away from the people that they used to be. The Jedi they should have become. He was so fearful that he couldn’t protect Ezra, and it’s something he still thinks about when he feels the weight of his disassembled lightsaber around his waist.

Kanan thought Ezra was less skittish about the topic since they talked about it with Hera years ago, but maybe he was wrong. 

Hera figured it out on her own before Ezra had even met her. 

Zeb found out when Kanan helped save his life, and when he told the Lasat that he personally understood what losing a people and a life in the blink of an eye was like.

Ezra had never actually told someone himself.

“Ezra, we’re not leaving the _Ghost_. We came with Hera because I told you that I felt it was where we were supposed to be, and I still do.”

“You’re just saying that because you don’t want to leave Hera,” Ezra grumbles, as if he hasn’t supported Kanan’s dedication to the woman since the beginning. Taking cheap shots out of anger—how typically _teenager_ of him.

Instead of taking Ezra’s bait, Kanan replies honestly and calmly. “Not _just_ , but you’re right. I don’t want to leave her or the cause that’s she’s set on. I also don’t think Sabine should leave. You and I can both feel it in the Force, even if we try not to. This ship, this crew, it’s…”

“It’s _right_ ,” Ezra groans. “The stupid Force is acting like it’s just put a bunch of puzzle pieces in the right place and we’re too oblivious to see it.”

“Something like that,” he agrees, because Hera alone was like a beacon in the Force. Kanan has known that since the night they met. Going after Zeb had felt like kismet, the job they were doing and him at a bar in the same town—all of them in the right place at the right time. Then there was finding Sabine, how Ezra had come to Kanan the night before they met her. He was filled with restlessness and unable to sleep until after they’d found her fighting off Imperial troopers all on her own and in reluctant need of backup. “So do you really think telling her everything would be such a bad idea?”

“I told her a lot of stuff,” Ezra admits. “I just didn’t use the J-word.”

“‘The J-word?’ Seriously, Ezra?” Kanan laughs, holding Ezra’s hands away when he tries to retaliate by shoving Kanan off of the bunk.

“Ugh, shut up.” This time Ezra fully sits up, letting his shorter legs hang off of the bunk next to Kanan’s.

Kanan puts his arm around Ezra. “I think you should talk to Sabine. ‘J-word’ and all. I’m sure she’d like to understand why you’re so upset. That it’s really not her fault.”

“She was the one asking—!” Ezra stops, receiving the look Kanan’s trying to project: her being inquisitive and trying to understand her new crew-mate and accidentally pushing his buttons wasn’t something to blame her for. “Okay, fine. I’ll talk to her. But I can’t—explain the beginning stuff to her first. Please.”

_The beginning stuff._ Kanan rolls his eyes at calling the story that, even though he knows what Ezra wants from him.

“Please,” Ezra repeats, almost begging. “I’m not ready for that yet. I’ll tell her about why I got upset and I’ll tell her the real truth about everything else, just—I don’t like thinking back to that night.”

The night the Temple fell, he means. The night Ezra watched his home be torn apart, his youngling friends killed in front of him, and how he’d lain in the streets of a lower level of Coruscant on his fifth birthday and bawled into Kanan’s chest.

Some day, he’s going to have to face it. They can’t run away from that night and who they used to be forever. It’s something Kanan’s beginning to learn with every new person they tell about their past with the Order.

For now, however, Kanan looks at Ezra’s pleading face—honest and sad and far too young to have such traumatic memories that set him off like this—and decides he can wait just a little bit longer.

He nods. “Yeah, yeah, okay. I’ll talk to her first.”

“Thanks.” Kanan brings Ezra in for a short one-armed hug. One of the only public displays of fatherly affections he’s allowed these days, since apparently now that Zeb and Sabine are around he can’t spare the person who basically raised him any kind of physical contact because _he’s almost fourteen, Dad, it’s embarrassing._

Even at that short contact, Ezra pulls away quickly, hopping down to the ground in front of his bunk and completely skipping the ladder.

Kanan takes the ladder down because he’s way less of a show-off than he used to be, and guides Ezra to the door with a light hand on his back. “Now, go tell Hera that she’s got nothing to worry about.”

Ezra looks back at him. “She’s going to worry anyway, you know.”

“Yeah, but if you give her a hug hello she might be so caught up in nostalgia about when you were younger and greeted us when we came home from missions that it’ll be way less than normal.”

“Geez, you’re both so touchy-feely lately.” Ezra dramatically shivers and walks away towards the cockpit despite his complaints.

“Love you too, kiddo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kanan’s out here just trying to Dad and Ezra won’t let him because he’s getting older. Poor Kanan.
> 
> I’ve thought about actually writing the conversation between Kanan and Sabine because I love fic about their father-daughter bond as much as I do about Kanan and Ezra’s father-son bond, but I’m going back and forth on it since I’m not sure how I want it to go yet. We’ll see. 
> 
> I always feel like I could do a million things in this verse but actually writing them to satisfaction is something very different, haha.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading! All comments, kudos, bookmarks, etc. are appreciated. Talk to me [on my tumblr](http://www.imgoingtocrash.tumblr.com) if you ever want to chat about this verse or anything else Star Wars, because I can't seem to stop writing for it.


End file.
